Widening the musical sphere

When I was younger, my musical tastes were pretty rigidly defined - I listened to a few set number of artists, and that was that. With the advent of YouTube, Pandora, and other places where listening to streaming audio is a breeze. I still don't like a couple of genres - country and rap/hip-hop to be specific (the former just doesn't suit my tastes, while you hardly need any musical talent at all for the latter) - but I'm just about open to listening to anything other than that. It's been useful helping me to get exposed to entire genres (for example, European power metal, through bands like Nightwish, Kamelot, and Sonata Arctica), as well as individual bands in genres I wouldn't ordinarily pay attention to (e.g. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, an indie rock band).

There's also the old-fashioned way - getting music from friends. One of my good friends from the good 'ole days in New York introduced me to a couple of divergent bands - Muse (an English prog rock band) and D'espairsRay, an industrial JRock band (my Japanese Pop Culture professor didn't expose us to any of their music) - through a mix CD. They're widely different styles, but I enjoy the music of both a great deal. Given that I don't listen to the radio - it's dominated these days largely with rap/hip-hop and pop punk garbage - listening to new music, even if it's not 'new' in the true sense of the word, is always an event for me.